Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (8 page)

CHAPTER 3

Growing Contacts, First Broadcasts
1939 -1941

rom the beginning of World War II, the Nazi message conveyed to the Arabs of North Africa and the Middle East, and to Muslims as a religious population more broadly, was a counterintuitive one. The Nazi regime was infamous around the world due, in part, to its loud and frequent assertions of the superiority of "the Aryan race." Yet its early radio broadcasts asserted that the leaders of the Third Reich were well informed about Arab politics and the religion of Islam, supported Arab aspirations for an end to British and French influence, and had a deep respect for and knowledge of the religious and cultural traditions of Islam. Nazi propaganda went even further, claiming that there were parallels and welcome affinities between National Socialism and Arab radical nationalism and the religion of Islam as the Nazis chose to interpret it.

Yet by the time Hitler's government decided to intensify its effort to court Arab and Muslim support, it was not in a strong position to affect events on the ground in the Middle East. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which was in force during World War II, required the United Kingdom to withdraw all troops from Egypt except those necessary to protect the Suez Canal. But it also ratified an alliance that in the event of war allowed the British to use Egyptian territory and to supply, train, and assist Egypt's army. Britain remained the Mandate power in Palestine, controlled the waters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and had air bases in Iraq, Egypt, and Aden. French influence encompassed French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Syria. While the Arab governments had little desire to enter the war on either side, they understood the realities of British and French armed forces in the region. In each country, there were Arab political leaders who supported the democracies against Nazi Germany. Despite some sympathy for Germany in parts of the Egyptian officer corps, the Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Italian sentiment from King Farouk and his circles, and broad support for neutrality, the Egyptian government broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on September 3, 1939, closed the German Embassy (and its intelligence operations), and interned German citizens. The government of Iraq also severed diplomatic and economic ties to the Third Reich. In October 1939, Haj Amin el-Husseini and his entourage (Jamal Huseini, Amin Tamimi, Fawzi el-Qawugji,ArefAbd er-Razeq, and Sheikh Hasan Salama) had to leave French-controlled Beirut. They went to Baghdad, where Husseini played a key role in the pro-Axis coup of March 1941. Of the Arab states, only Saudi Arabia and Yemen retained diplomatic and economic ties to the Third Reich. Despite their unhappiness about restrictions on immigration set by the British White Paper, the Jews in Palestine overwhelmingly supported England, as did moderate Palestinians associated with the Nashashibi clan. In fall 1939, due to British and French wartime censorship of the pro-Axis sentiment in the local press and media, and the closing of German and Italian embassies and consulates, Nazi Germany had fewer possibilities to exert political influence, engage in espionage, or support Arab sympathizers in the battle against "Britain and the Jews" than it had before it began the war in Europe.'

In this situation of Allied presence and Axis absence, shortwave radio broadcasts from Germany (in conjunction with older Italian broadcasts) moved to the center of Nazi Germany's propaganda efforts aimed at North Africa and the Middle East.' Given the high rates of illiteracy, radio would have been central even if Germany had a greater presence on the ground. On April 25, 1939, in the town of Zeesen south of Berlin, the Nazi regime began broadcasting in Arabic with powerful shortwave transmitters. At the beginning of 1940, the Zeesen stations transmitted two Arabic broadcasts daily. By summer 1940, they were sending three broadcasts daily, 95 minutes in all.3 By October 1939, the Zeesen stations were on air for 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, in 113 daily broadcasts. The number of daily hours on air increased to 22 by January 1940, 31 by summer 1940, and 53 by 1943.4 National Socialist radio transmitted literally around the globe in Arabic, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, and Turkish. In the year following September 1939, the Nazis produced 89,500 foreign-language broadcasts that took up 30,500 hours of radio time. By the end of 1940, about 500 people were working in the various offices of German foreign-language radio broadcasting. The broadcasts went to Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. The most frequently used foreign languages were English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Afrikaans, Russian, and Arabic. By February 1941, German shortwave radio was broadcasting every day 740 minutes to "Asia" and 400 minutes to Africa. Prominent exiled politicians, such as Subhas Chandra Bose from India, Rashid Ali Kilani from Iraq, and Haj Amin el-Husseini, were frequent speakers.' German journalists working on the Arabic broadcasts did not speak Arabic and often knew little about Arab and Muslim societies.' Hence the native Arabic speakers working on the stations provided a linguistic resource in short supply in Berlin.

German Orientalists worked with Arab native speakers to find Arabic terms for the vocabulary of twentieth-century warfare, economics, science, culture, and technology. Though the number of Arabic speakers among the Germans was small, it was sufficient to ascertain that the on-air broadcasts corresponded to the prepared German texts. Comparison of the fraction of German originals that survived the war with English translations of the Arabic broadcasts done by Allied diplomats and intelligence agents confirms that they closely follow Foreign Ministry guidelines.7 One historian of the regime's foreign-language radio offices has written that within the broader program of foreign-language shortwave broadcasts, "the Orient Zone had absolute priority." Its staff of 80 persons broadcast programs to Arabs, Turks, Persians (Iranians), and Indians.' Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry and Joachim von Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry competed for several years for control over the programs. In October 1941, Hitler resolved the dispute for most of the remaining war years when he gave primary responsibility to Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry.9

Within the Foreign Ministry, policy toward the Middle East was developed in the Political Department's Orient Office, also called Office VII. Throughout the war its director was Wilhelm Melchers. On December 16, 1939, Melchers (1900-1971) replaced Otto von Hentig as the director of the Orient Office, remaining in that post until the end of the war. In that position he worked closely with the Orient Office in the Department of Radio Policy. He had served in the German army in 1918 and studied at the universities of Gottingen, Freiburg, Kiel, and Jena, where he received a law degree in 1923. He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1923 with a focus on international economic issues. In the 193os, he served in German embassies in Addis Ababa (1927-31) and Tokyo (1934-35). In the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, he worked in Division III dealing with Britain, the United States, and the Orient. He served in Germany's legation in Tehran from 1935 to 1937, and in Haifa from 1937 to 1939. He joined the Nazi Party on September 1,1939.10

In coordination with Ribbentrop's office, the Orient Office established guidelines for propaganda and political strategy toward Egypt, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Sudan, and Ceylon." The production of the radio broadcasts themselves was the responsibility of Office VII within the Foreign Ministry's Department of Radio Policy (Rundfunkpoli- tischeAbteilung). Kurt Munzel was the preeminent German official in that office from the beginning of the war. He became its director from 1942 onward. The budget for the entire Department of Radio Policy for 1942-43, the only year for which figures are available, was 6,653,000 reichmarks,' 2 which paid for a staff that, as of September 1,1943, had 226 employees.' 3 Kurt Georg Kiesinger, later chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (1966-69), was director of the entire Department of Radio Policy from 1943 to 1945.14 The staff of the Orient Office within the Department of Radio Policy wrote and discussed German texts for broadcast primarily in Arabic, but also in Persian or Hindi, and intended for audiences in North Africa, the Middle East (Egypt to Iraq), Afghanistan, Sudan, Ceylon, Turkey, Iran, and India. The Orient Office in the Radio Department met regularly with the Orient Office in the Political Department, one that included experts on the region and officials responsible for contact with prominent Arab exiles, such as Haj Amin el-Husseini (the Germans referred to him simply as the Mufti) and Rashid Ali Kilani.15 Among the various divisions of the Foreign Ministry working on foreign-language broadcasts to Europe and indeed all over the globe, only the Russian division's staff of 51 was larger. 1 6

Kurt Munzel (1905-82) lived in Egypt from 1929 to 1939, where he worked at the German Orient Bank (1929-31) and the Dresdner Bank (1931-39) and studied at the American University in Cairo. While living abroad, he joined the Nazi Party on April 1, 1933. In 1941, he served on the advisory board of the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin. Beginning in 1942, he taught Arabic at the University of Berlin. He began to work as a scholarly adviser in the Foreign Ministry in September 1939, and on December 7,1939, he joined the radio sec tion of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Radio Policy, where he was responsible for Arabic broadcasts. On January 1, 1942, he was appointed director of Office VII, the Orient Office in the Department of Radio Policy, and remained in that position until the end of the war.' 7 In 1942 he led a staff of nineteen, which included (judging from the names) seven native Arabic speakers, and four "scholarly assistants," that is, Germans with knowledge of Arabic, the Arab world, and Islam. The office also published Barid as-Sarq (Orient Post), an Arabic-language magazine, and worked closely with the Arab Committee in the Foreign Ministry.'8 Dr. Joachim Senff, who received his doctorate in 1938 from the University of Erlangen in Arabic and Islamic studies, was a staff member. The staff included writers and translators who, again judging from their names, were both native German and native Arabic speakers. Other members of the staff included: Hans Queling, Abdel Hakim El Nagger, Dr. Rosemarie Heyd, Dr. Juan Murad, Hade Najib Quanas, Nuralidin Abdul-Hadi, Necati Akcan, Saidduddin Swallhay, Felix Schulze, Ahmed Kadem, Irmgard Werk, Wilhelmine Eichler, Ingeborg Prietz, Annemarie Rtither, Gisela Hildebrandt, and Elfriede Petschulat. Dr. Georg Kaspar and Dr. Hans-Joachim Kissling were responsible for liaison with the military, which had its own significant propaganda efforts.'9

Germany's military victories in May and June 1940 over French and British forces in Europe enhanced its prestige among potential Arab and Muslim supporters in the Middle East. In Europe, antifascists viewed these months as ones of victory of the dictators over the democracies. Radical nationalists and Islamists in the Middle East saw the same events as defeats of colonial powers by the Third Reich, which presented itself as an anticolonial power. On July 6, 1940, one of Husseini's representatives, Naji Bey Shawkat, the former minister of justice in the Iraqi government, met with the German ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen. Via Shawkat, Husseini asked von Papen "to convey to His Excellency the Great Chief and Leader [Hitler] my sincerest felicitations on the occasion of the great political and military triumphs which he has just achieved through his foresight and genius. I beg Your Excellency to convey to him my regards and compliments, together with my best wishes for the undertaking entered upon to create a new order." Husseini also expressed his thanks to Hitler for the attention he had given to the Palestine problem in the preceding four years. He told Hitler that "the Arab nation everywhere feels the greatest joy and deepest gratification on the occasion of these great successes" of the German armies in Europe. Palestine had "been fighting the democracies and international Jewry" and was now "ready at any time to assume an active role and redouble her efforts both at home and in the other Arab countries. The Arab people, slandered, maltreated and deceived by our common enemies, confidently expect that the result of your final victory will be their independence and complete liberation as well as the creation of their unity, when they will be linked to your country by a treat of friendship and collaboration.... I beg Your Excellency to believe the most brotherly sentiments of the Arab people toward your great and valiant people, and present to you, Excellency my best greetings.."20

While pleased to receive friendly greetings from Husseini, the Germans reacted cautiously because they placed greater priority on close relations with their ally Mussolini, who had imperial ambitions of his own in the Mediterranean, than they did with a Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who had no state or army to offer. The director of the Political Department of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, State Secretary Ernst Woermann, informed von Papen in Ankara and Ambassador Fritz Grobba in Baghdad to continue talks with Shawkat yet not to undermine Italian primacy in formulating Axis policy toward the Arabs.21 In August, these diplomats had further meetings with Husseini's representatives. The latter promised "to assist Axis powers everywhere in their war against the English, especially by a new revolt in Palestine" as well as with activity in Iraq.22 With France defeated and England weakened, Husseini and fellow exiles, gathered in what was called the Arab Committee, received a reserved but sympathetic hearing from the Germans.23